The Story Behind the Burberry Trench Coat
Thomas Burberry was twenty-one years old in 1856 when he opened a small draper's shop in Basingstoke, Hampshire. His observation that local shepherds' smocks repelled rain led him to develop gabardine in 1879 — a tightly woven, yarn-dyed cotton fabric that was waterproof yet breathable. This single textile innovation would eventually clothe millions of soldiers and transform outerwear permanently.
Burberry patented gabardine in 1888 and began supplying it to the British military, outfitting polar explorer Ernest Shackleton and aviator Claude Grahame-White before the First World War brought the trench coat its defining moment and its name. The British War Office commissioned Burberry to design an officer's coat suited to the wet, freezing conditions of trench warfare.
Every element of the original trench coat served a military function. The D-rings on the belt held grenades and maps. The epaulettes displayed rank insignia. The storm flap across the right shoulder deflected rain and provided extra padding for a rifle butt. The check lining — later to become fashion's most recognisable pattern — was simply the standard fabric used for British military linings.
After 1918, demobilised officers retained their trench coats for civilian life, and the garment transitioned seamlessly from battlefield to city street. Humphrey Bogart wearing a Burberry in Casablanca in 1942 cemented the trench coat's dual identity — simultaneously utilitarian and romantic, practical and impossibly cinematic.
The Burberry Heritage Trench, available as the Westminster (classic fit), Kensington (modern fit), and Chelsea (slim fit), remains manufactured at the company's Castleford factory in Yorkshire using the original gabardine weave. Prices begin around two thousand pounds, positioning the garment as investment outerwear rather than disposable fashion (https://www.burberry.com).
The Burberry check — officially called the Haymarket check — nearly destroyed the brand in the early 2000s when overexposure and counterfeiting diluted its exclusivity. Christopher Bailey and later Riccardo Tisci restored the brand's positioning by limiting the check's visibility and emphasising the trench coat itself as the house's primary icon.
The Burberry trench coat endures because its design has nothing to improve. The proportions, the gabardine weight, and the functional details established during wartime remain optimal for their purpose over a century later. Acquiring one is not following fashion — it is investing in a garment that predates trends and will outlast every one of them.
